[Kissargi]

I bought a 1ghz g4 MDD about 12 months ago, from day one i had a problem with the mac freezing up randomly sometimes twice a day, sometimes twice a week, its VERY random, everything on the screen freezes (including the cursor) and if music is playing you just get a beat of music repeating over and over. The only way to regain control is to hold down the power key and restart.

Ive tried reinstalling, rezeroing, removing hard drives, swapping hard drives, removing ram, swapping ram, hardware tests, zapping pram, etc etc etc, you name it ive done it. even the apple hardware test on loop for 3 hours doesn't find a problem.

I rang apple and they sent someone to collect the machine, a week later it came back, they had found no problem and had done nothing (other than give my mac a ride to london and back). The mac was ok for a few days, then it froze up again.

I bought ut2004 a few days ago and if i play for 2 hours in a day it freezes up about 4-5 times... randomly again.... I had found before that playing a dvd also makes the problem worse. Is there a component that the apple hardware test doesn't scan that could affect these

Ill have to ring apple and then get them to come take my computer away again, but i use my computer all the time for work and play, being without it for a week or two when theres no guarantee they will fix the problem is not something im looking forward too, so if anyone could make a guess at what could be causing this i will be very grateful indeed.

cheers

[Kissargi]

is there anything that the hardware test doesn't scan?

[Kissargi]

or anything games stress heavily that could cause a system wise freeze up?


*desperate man*

[Nivag]

what brand of ram do you have installed? i know you've said you swapped/removed it, but it could still be causing you intermittent problems.

other than that Techtool Pro 4 has a an advance hardware test software on it's disk and operates in Panther, you could try that...

other than that, i can't think of anything you haven't already tried.

[Kissargi]

There's one original Apple 256 module and another 256 module installed by Mac Warehouse when I purchased the machine. Even with just the original Apple ram is still freezes up. Unless both chips of ram are faulty it isn't that :s Ill look into tech tools pro tho, thanks.

[D'Espice]

Have you tried running your Mac with only the additional RAM stick? Never forget that even the sticks Apple puts in might be defective.

[Kissargi]

ye, ive tried that too, im planning to buy another chip from crucial soon tho, so ill try running with just that. Tech tools deluxe finds nothing wrong either, if it wasnt for the freezes id have a perfect system.

Could the graphics card have a fault? the hardware tests say the v ram is ok, but i dont really trust them 100% atm.

[reader50]

The next time it freezes, open the side door before you reboot and look at the graphics card. Is the fan on the GPU still running? An overheating graphics card can lock a system up, and modern games stress the graphics card a lot.

Using a ton of windows and Exposé also stress the graphics card, do freezes happen when you have more/larger windows open?

I'd also suggest pulling and reseating the graphics card to eliminate any poor connections in the AGP slot.

[Kissargi]

theres no fan on the card, its only the stock geforce 4 mx, Ill try reseating the card tho, thanks

[stuffedmonkey]

I assume at thin point that you have tried reformatting the drive? If you have tried that, I would have to assume either the processor or graphics card. The crashes you descrive do sound like hardware...

[Kissargi]

ye, ive reformatted, re-zeroed and even tried another hd.

[Squozen]

Sounds like heat to me. Open the side, point a desk fan at the videocard/CPU area (keep it a couple of feet away to be safe) and see if the machine stays stable. My guess would be that there's a bad seal between the heatsink and the GPU on the videocard.

[Kissargi]

i tried re-seating the graphics card, no luck :s

[bitwiz]

I have a dual 1.8 G5 that I purchased in November that is exhibiting the same kind of freeze that you mention, with the last second of audio playing before the freeze repeating over and over. I can move the cursor, but not force-quite or switch to another program. The machine is frozen solid. The only thing that frees it up is a powerdown. I've troubleshot it, and have come to the conclusion that it is a bug in 10.3.X. If you go to the discussion forums on apples sight (under Panther-general use) and search for the word "freeze", you'll find hundreds of posts from people having similar problems. And it is happening on many different types of macs -- the only commonality seems to be 10.3.X. There are even people that have said that their system was completely stable under Jaguar, but after upgrading to Panther, they have the same problem.

I've also repaired permission, repaired disk, run the cron scripts, formatted the harddrive and reinstalled from scratch, and the problem still persists.

Unfortunately, Apple has kept us in the dark. I'd much rather have them admit there is a problem (assuming there is one), and say they are working on it, instead of pretending there is no problem and leaving us to fend for ourselves.

http://discussions.info.apple.com/We...Ls.0@.68902fff

This topic is the second one on the subject. The board moderators deleted the first one after it had over 150 posts.

[traktimino]

it does sound like a heat problem to me, hmm now where to go from here

[Kissargi]

its not a 10.3.x problem for me, it was doing it with 10.2.3 , really badly with 10.2.5, slightly better with 10.2.8 and back to 10.2.3 levels of stableness with panther.

If it is a heat problem with the graphics card ive been considering an upgrade to a better card in the next 6 months or so anyway, so it would kill two birds with one stone. but Id rather know it was going to solve the problem before i shell out for a £300+ card. Could i buy a temperature measuring kit or something? or do they only work for cpus?

[bitwiz]

In my case, I don't believe it is a heat issue. It can happen almost immediatly after powerup -- or after the system has been running for more than 24 hours. It has happened in the middle of the winter when the temp in my house was in the 60's and in the summer when the temp has been in the upper 80's. To me, it still looks like an OS bug since it is happening across a broad cross-section of different types of macs.

Also, I had apple replace my graphics card, and am still having the problem.

[Nivag]

Originally posted by Kissargi:
its not a 10.3.x problem for me, it was doing it with 10.2.3 , really badly with 10.2.5, slightly better with 10.2.8 and back to 10.2.3 levels of stableness with panther.

If it is a heat problem with the graphics card ive been considering an upgrade to a better card in the next 6 months or so anyway, so it would kill two birds with one stone. but Id rather know it was going to solve the problem before i shell out for a £300+ card. Could i buy a temperature measuring kit or something? or do they only work for cpus?

you could buy a cheap fan to stick inside to see if that helps? they only cost a few quid, i've bought a few from these people (clicky) - i bought some quiet Vantec fans in an effort to make my Quicksilver quieter. but they do some cheap and cheerful fans that blow loads of air inside the case.

this one can fit next to the graphics card to exhaust the hot air blower

hope this helps...

[Kissargi]

Ill give that fan a try, thanks. I presume it has a g4 compatible power connector with it? (im new to hardware modifications) Thanks again.

[Nivag]

they normally plug into the hard drive feed, with a power pass through type connection. you should have a spare power feed inside the MDD unless you've maxed it out with HDs.

[Kissargi]

on the subject of fans, is it be possible to replace all the fans in the mdd with almost silent ones and still keep it as cool or cooler than it is now? or would the temperature have to rise slightly?

[Nivag]

it's not a good idea to have any temperature rise at all, even a small one.

i think it is possible to swap them all, your best bet would be to check this site out.

http://www.g4noise.com/

anyway how's the freezing problem going have you sorted it yet?

[Kissargi]

cheers, ill take a look at that site. I just got the blower for the pci slot today, so ill let you know if it helps.

[Kissargi]

i fired up ut2004 and within 5 mins the screen froze up :s Im getting tempted to just save up for a g5....

[Kissargi]

nothing i do seems to help, its just odd that it crashes so much more often in modern games, than when im running photoshop or 10 different apps at once. Has anyone got any ideas? This is driving me crazy.

[Kissargi]

it seems to be worse under 10.3.4 too

[Nivag]

is this a dual boot machine? i can't remember?

if it is, do you get the same problem in OS 9?

the only other thing i can suggest is opening up the machine and remove and reset every bit of hardware you can find.

Also have you reset the firmware and cuda switch?

[Kissargi]

nah, its osx only im afraid. How do i reset firmware and the cuda switch?

Ive tried lifting and reseating the graphics card, ram and hard drive, Is there anything else i can lift without risking serious problems?

[Nivag]

try this for resetting firmware

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

cuda switch

i can't find the info at the moment

[Kissargi]

tried resetting the pram, no luck. the cuda switch is the button on the motherboard marked reset i presume?

[reader50]

The CUDA reset switch is in different places on different motherboards. Usually it is close to the battery.

[The Placid Casual]

I had exactly the same issues on my Dual 867 machine.

It went back to apple 4 times in the end and they claimed there was nothing wrong with it!

In the end they replaced the motherboard, but it still froze (?!) so I went to my reseller and flipped, and the replaced its for another machine.

I posted about the dual 867 freezing issue a while ago and was deluged with happy ownership stories! However I stand by the fact that there is a 'freezing' fault on some machines...

(P.S. Do you have 2 optical drives installed? This is a classic cause of crashes on the MDD machines...)

Good Luck.

[Kissargi]

ive only got one optical drive installed. Guess this is a good excuse to save up for a g5

[cal6n]

Hi
Just thought I'd relate my experience with this sort of fault.

I'm running a dual boot 1.25 GHz DP MDD. When I bought it last Sept it was throwing up random kernel panics like crazy. Took me ages to track the problem down but I eventually found it was the RAM slots. I had 4 DIMMs and they'd all work in the default slot, but none of them would work in any of the other three slots. They'd all show up as good with a memory test but as soon as any serious data was crunched, the contacts weren't up to it and the whole machine would crash. I reckon it was some form of oxidation or tarnish. A good dose of a specialised electronic cleaning solvent (I used "Servisol Aero Klene 50") and reseating the RAM VERY firmly, with a good side to side wiggle, totally sorted it out. I've not seen one kernel panic since.

[Kissargi]

it does seem to be worse if the ram is in slots 0 and 1 than if there in... *checks about this mac to check where they are*.... 1 and 3. ill have a go at cleaning the contacts and play with the position of the ram. Thanks for your input.